Movement is everything when it comes to first-person shooters. Forget the BFGs, the ultraviolence, and the immersive storytelling—none of it matters if the player stumbles from place to place like a lopsided parade float. Boomerang X from developer DANG! is one of the rare games that make movement the central focus, resulting in a unique experience that can challenge even the most experienced rocket jumpers.

At first you might assume Boomerang X is focused on combat, not movement. You're pursued endlessly by shadowy creatures, the titular boomerang your only line of defense. Its blades can slash through almost anything at high velocity.

The boomerang is more than a weapon, though. Throwing it keeps you airborne, high above (and safe from) the crawling dangers below. With it, Boomerang X transforms from a game about slicing bugs in half into a high-stakes dance. You warp from cleaved monster to cleaved monster, staying one step ahead of the swarm—or else it's "Game Over." Your reward for conquering each arena is a seemingly even-more-impossible aerial challenge, an engrossing loop. 

And while it could've gotten away with a standard level select screen, it instead wraps its challenges in just the right amount of storytelling and mystique. Between levels, you'll speak with a charming centipede who reveals bits and pieces about the miniaturized biosphere you’re slicing and dicing your way through. These quiet moments tie everything together into a cohesive campaign that’s a joy to blast through.

That said, there's an amazing arcade experience at the heart of it—one you could theoretically play forever. Enter Endless Mode, which DANG! added post-launch after players finished the campaign and cried out for more. In Endless Mode, monsters of all difficulties just keep spawning and spawning. Only the most skilled can outrun them for any significant length of time.

Luckily this arcade experience doesn't require Epic Games Store players to feed quarters into their PC like the games of old, or this would become a very expensive hobby. Boomerang X demands total mastery, and you can expect to spend many, many hours perfecting every subtlety of its movement and combat. Once you do so, you'll find you have the skills to handle greater challenges in old favorites as well. After lining up near-impossible shots against hordes of spiders, I've found that games like DOOM are no longer as daunting as they once seemed. If only the team at DANG! could also find a way to gamify "Doing Your Taxes."

Boomerang X is available now on the Epic Games Store.